Cities Competing to Win EPA’s Green Power Community Challenge / District of Columbia and Brookville, Md. currently lead the green power charge

WASHINGTON – The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) first Green Power Community Challenge has reached its mid-year point with 36 communities setting an example for other cities, towns, villages, and Native American tribes to use renewable energy to help protect people’s health and the environment. At this point in the competition, the two category leaders are Washington, D.C. for its total green power usage and Brookeville, Md. for the percentage of its total electricity use that is green power.

The top five communities in the usage category are Washington, D.C., Portland, Ore, Santa Clara, Calif., Gresham, Ore., and Bellingham, Wash. The top five communities in the percentage of green power usage category are Brookeville, Md., Swarthmore, Pa., Bellingham, Wash., Rivers Falls, Wis., and Corvallis, Ore.

At the end of the year-long national challenge in September 2011, EPA will recognize the community that uses the most green power and the one that achieves the highest green power percentage of total electricity use.
Green power communities are collectively purchasing nearly 2.6 billion kWh of green power annually. This is equivalent to the electricity use of more than 226,000 average American homes.

Green power is generated from renewable resources such as solar, wind, geothermal, biomass, biogas, and low-impact hydropower. Green power resources produce electricity with an environmental profile superior to conventional power technologies, and produce significantly fewer greenhouse gas emissions.